Fancy buzzwords won’t build you a website
There are a lot of buzz words in web at the moment.
Lean.
Scrum.
MVP.
Agile.
Unfortunately, time and time again, these buzz words are thrown into projects with the expectation that it will deliver something bright. Something magical. This isn’t the case.
It really annoys me when I am told to, for example develop a project ‘agile’. What does that mean? What is agile? How is agile development? Just because a project is ‘agile’ does not necessarily mean that the website will solve all underlying business issues than its former self.
To provide some context into my argument, let me explain what a few of the buzz words floating in the market actually mean.
Agile
Agile is a series of software development methods that focuses on developing a project incrementally. It focuses on communication as opposed to (detailed) documentation and continuous, sustained achievement.
Scrum
Scrum is a flexible framework to Agile and it embodies 3 core roles – the Product Owner, the Scum Master and the development team. Work is communicated, defined, executed and consequently delivered over a certain period of time.
Lean
Lean is all about the Build – Measure – Learn loop. Contrary to popular belief, Lean is not build and release quickly.
MVP
MVP is inherently, the least amount of work that can be possibly done so that you can learn from your customers. An MVP is a big experiment.
All of these terms won’t build you a website. What will build you a website is a good idea, good planning and good execution (and a good agency!). Regardless of whichever methodology you choose, and regardless of whichever product approach you decide to take – if you don’t plan, and if you don’t execute it properly – then you may just end up with a glorified agiled, scrumm’ed, lean’ed and MVP’ed mess.
